MONTREAL — A community leader in the Far North is praying Mother Nature will help free a pod of killer whales trapped under sea ice after he was informed an icebreaker would not be coming to the rescue.

Video footage taken by people in the Quebec village of Inukjuak showed the massive animals thrusting themselves skyward through an opening in the ice as they gasped for air from their blowholes.

Locals say about a dozen orcas gathered around the hole — which was slightly bigger than a pickup truck — amid their desperate bid to take in oxygen.

Mayor Peter Inukpuk urged the Department of Fisheries and Oceans on Wednesday to send an icebreaker as soon as possible to smash nearby floes to help the mammals reach open water.

But Inukpuk told The Canadian Press later in the day that DFO informed him the icebreakers were too far from the area for such a mission.

Now, he’s hoping a strong wind will come out of the east to push the floating ice far away enough from shore to free the killer whales.

“But that is (an) act of God and not in our control,” Inukpuk said.

“For me, anything that can help. I’m trying to look left and right and finally I went upstairs.”

Inukpuk plans to talk with DFO on Thursday by phone to see if any other course of action is possible.

In a brief statement Wednesday, the federal department said it was assessing the situation with partners and experts in the region. It’s unclear if any DFO action will be taken.

“Situations where marine mammals are trapped by the ice are not unusual in the North,” DFO spokeswoman Nathalie Letendre wrote in an email.

Inukpuk said it was on Tuesday that a hunter from his village first spotted the pod of trapped orcas at the hole, which is some 30 kilometres from town. Inukjuak, on the eastern shore of Hudson Bay, is about 1,500 kilometres north of Montreal.

Word of the unusual spectacle spread quickly though the village, prompting dozens of locals to make the one-hour snowmobile ride Tuesday to the scene.

They snapped photos and shot video footage of the killer whales bobbing to the surface in the opening — and sometimes rocketing half their bodies straight up out of the hole as they took in oxygen.

Curious locals who didn’t make Tuesday’s trip gathered at a community centre that night to watch videos of the scene.

“Our people asked for a prayer for these killer whales,” said Inukpuk, whose village is home to 1,800 people. “Our local people are very much concerned.”

One woman who made the journey to the gap in the ice said even a curious polar bear approached the hole amid the orcas’ commotion. Siasie Kasudluak said the bear was eventually shot by a hunter and the meat was shared among locals.

The trapped orcas, meanwhile, appeared to be in distress and the people were ill-equipped to help out. Time also appeared to be running out, as the hole seemed to be shrinking in the -30 C temperature, Kasudluak said.

“It was amazing, but they needed air and it’s very touching,” said Kasudluak, who stood on the ice with close to 50 other people from Inukjuak.